The Lady of Shalott
by Mairi Le Fay
Summary: Lily spent her childhood hiding from her father and shunned by her sister. On those many days when she was trapped in her room, she would read a poem about a woman who was just as imprisoned as she was. But when she returns to her childhood home after escaping her father once and for all, she realizes (with some help from James) that she's not as much like the Lady as she thought.


The Lady of Shalott

**AN: Hey, this is Mairi le Fay. This is an idea that came into my brain when I was reading the poem, "The Lady of Shalott" by Alfred Lord Tennyson. This fic sort of like a songfic, but with a poem. This story is really sad, so if you like happier stories, maybe you should check out some other ones. I'd recommend the other story I'm working on, the Case of the Stolen Diary, but I won't. Oh wait, I technically just did. Ah, well, enjoy! P.S.—There's a spoiler in this for the end of the poem, BTW. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own the characters in Harry Potter (JK Rowling does.) And I definitely don't own the poem this is based on, because that poem was written about 200 years before I was alive. So, yeah.**

**WARNING: I referred to domestic violence in this story, but I didn't actually describe it that much. Still, this is rated T.**

"_Four gray walls, and four gray towers overlook a space of flowers, and the silent isle embowers The Lady of Shalott."__** –**__Alfred Lord Tennyson_

_Prologue_

_James stared, mouth agape, at the bruises on Lily's arms. The angry purple-blue contrasted her pale porcelain skin, and her tears, which had rolled from her face to her outstretched arms, dotted the bruises delicately. He grasped her hands, trying to calm the waves of rage that were washing over his mind. _

"_Lily."_

_She wouldn't look him in the eye. Instead she pointed her watery eyes down to her feet, the tears dripping onto the common room floor._

"_Who. Who did this to you?"_

_Without looking up, she replied. "M-my father." Her voice was small and fragile, like a thin icicle dangling from a roof._

"_I'll kill him."_

"_James, please. He says he's sorry, he'll get help—"_

_She descended into openly crying, breaking James's heart more with each sob. He gathered her in his arms and held her close, stroking his fingers through her red hair. She cried on his shoulder, soaking his clean school shirt, but he didn't care._

"_I love you, Lily, I love you. I promise, no one will ever lay a finger on you again."_

One year later

"_I am half-sick of shadows," said the Lady of Shalott._

"Well, here we are," Lily said, opening the door to her childhood home. Her voice sounded like it always did, but James could detect a small quaver in her tone. She was nervous, and he couldn't blame her.

They had come to retrieve some old things of Lily's. She had recently moved in with James's family, after she'd finally had enough of her father. After a particularly nasty fight with her father, she'd run away to James's welcoming arms.

As they walked through the door to the living room, James felt very out of place. He'd grown up in the huge Potter mansion, surrounded by luxury, but this was an ordinary, middle-class muggle home. Lily, however, looked a little less apprehensive. She was looking all around, taking in all the good memories before they were soured by the bad. She knew this place by heart—she knew how many stairs there were in the staircase, and she knew which stairs creaked when you walked on them. She knew each crack in the driveway outside, and she knew each streak in the paint on the wall. And—her stomach turned as she saw them—she knew each shard from a broken beer bottle, littered across the floor.

James laid a comforting hand on her back. "Let's go up to your room and get your things."

"Okay," Lily said in a small voice. She led him up the staircase, pausing in front of the door. The nervous expression on her face was back, and she reached for James's hand. "This room was my prison. I was never allowed to go out to town, and I didn't want to leave my bedroom and face my dad." James could see that her face was turning red, almost like she was going to cry.

He held her close. "I'm here, love."

Lily's shaking hand turned the doorknob, and the door opened to reveal her old room. It was a very Lilyish room—pale lavender walls lined with bookshelves and a desk covered in half-finished stories and letters. She walked to her dresser and began packing her things. Meanwhile, James picked up a book lying on her bed and opened it to the page she'd marked with a bookmark. The page said, in big letters, "The Lady of Shallot."

Lily noticed him. "That's my favorite poem."

James thumbed through the pages—he'd never been much for poetry. "What's it about?"

"Well, there's a woman, the Lady of Shalott, who lives in this castle on an island, and all day she weaves pictures on her loom, pictures of what she sees from this mirror that reflects the outside world. She has to use the mirror, because she's cursed and can't look out at the world around her or leave her castle. She's stuck there forever."

James was silent for a moment, and then he spoke.

"Like you."

He saw Lily tense, but she said nothing. "You know, since you said this was your prison, and you never left because—"

"You're right," she said quietly. "Exactly right." She took the book from him and turned the pages until she reached the inside of the back cover. In her delicate handwriting, what seemed like hundreds of words were scribbled. There were dates followed by little sentences, and a few of the words were blurred from tears. James squinted and read a few of the sentences.

_6/17—Dad was drunk again. I stayed in here all day. Note to self: must invest in a lock for my door._

_6/23—Petunia had friends over. She didn't want her friends to see her "freak" of a sister, so she made me promise to stay in my room._

_7/1—Dad got really, really mad. I went out to the store, but he was drunk and he thought I was going to a party or nightclub or something. So I left the groceries I'd bought on the table and ran as fast as I could up here. Also, Petunia said she was going to have that whale of a boyfriend, Vernon, over tomorrow. So I guess I'm spending another day in my room._

_7/2: I listened in on a conversation between Vernon and Petunia. He doesn't know anything about Hogwarts, but he's very much like Petunia in the sense that he can't abide "weird" people. I really hope that the two of them get married and have a magical child. Seeing Petunia's face as she sees all the wizards at platform 9 ¾ would be priceless._

_7/6: Dad again._

There were more, stretching down to the bottom of the page, squeezed in at every possible blank space.

"These are all the times I felt like The Lady of Shalott," said Lily. "I felt trapped, all by myself." Her voice was little more than a whisper. James put the book down on the bed and wrapped his arms around her, for a few minutes, he let her cry onto his shoulder.

"Well, did the Lady ever escape from her tower?" He asked.

"Yes," she sniffed, "But she died."

James smiled gently. "Well, that's the main reason why you're different from her. You have a happy ending. You'll never be stuck in here again."

Her tear-ridden face tilted upwards until she could meet his eyes. "Thank you..."

"You're welcome, love. Now, let's finish packing your stuff."

Lily gathered up the rest of her things and lifted up her suitcase. "Let's go."

As they left, Lily glanced upon her old home for the last time. As they walked down the front porch steps, a small smile graced her lips.

"You know, the Lady did eventually get to see what the world outside her window looked like, before she died," Lily said. "I'm glad she finally got to see it, like I am now."

James smiled, too. "Let's get back to my house."

They apparated back to James's house. Lily smiled up at Potter Mansion, her new home. Mrs. Potter's face was visible through the window as she waved at her son and his girlfriend, and they could hear the faint sound of Sirius falling off his broomstick in the backyard. This felt more like home to Lily than anywhere else she'd ever been, except for maybe Hogwarts. As Mrs. Potter emerged from the door and gave each of them a hug, and Sirius strolled over complaining about his broom, a single line of the poem came to Lily's mind.

"_She left the web, she left the loom, she made three paces thro' the room, she saw the water-lily bloom, she saw the helmet and the plume, she look'd down to Camelot."_


End file.
